Aisling

Living with Amaya definitely had its benefits: like when she came home late last night after having spent nearly two days straight out in the woods training. While Amaya hadn’t been able to get rid of the general tired feeling she had - only a good bit of sleep would do that - she had been able to get rid of the injuries and general aches she had sustained while kicking her own ass in a manner of speaking. Amaya had then made sure Aisling ate a well balanced meal, took in lots of fluid, and then had sent her off to bed to sleep: all at roughly three o’clock in the morning.

So, the fact that it was noon and still sleeping? Not exactly unexpected. Of course, Amaya had been gone for hours now: she had to work a long shift at the hospital and so the medic had stopped by and asked Michi to check on Aisling at some point while she was gone.

Of course… Amaya had no idea that Aisling was going to have a particularly nasty bout of night terrors this time around. But, alas, Aisling was. She was reliving in her nightmares one of the very real things that had happened to her in the past. Her screams of terror, loud and yet incapable of tearing her out of her sleep, echoed through the otherwise empty house. This night terror had been going on for a while: Aisling was wrapped up in her sheets and blankets, knotted in them as if she had been twisting and turning in her sleep which she had. Sweat had broken out on her forehead over half an hour ago and drenched her hair fairly well. Her heart was racing a mile a minute, and her breath despite being asleep was being drawn in and exhaled as if she were running from something… And in her head? She was. She was reliving one of many escape attempts from those who once held her captive and tortured her in every conceivable way. She was running for her life because she knew what would happen if she was caught: she knew the punishment that awaited her.

Yet, they were catching up to her, just as they had when it had all happened. There was no escape, no reprieve to come from the torture she was about to endure…

Michizuka

Genin

2

Well, that wasn't what he was expecting when he stopped by. He'd been asked to check in on things and people, and he wasn't about to say no to his best friend and let's face it, Amaya was as much his Sister as this point as she was Kenta or Naota's, so he was going to go above and beyond without a second thought. Not that this was, this was just family being family, so there was nothing to be worried about, or so he thought. No, this was wrong; there was too much fear and pain and just wrong in the air; he could taste the heated darkness, it clouded his vision as much as it shadowed his mind. This was wrong. This was bad.

He might not be a speed demon like his husband, but he was still a Jounin, and he could move. He didn't need to be able to see, or think, or anything; he knew every inch of the this place better than anyone but Amaya could have; movement was instinct and instinct had no lag time; he was across the house and to the room he needed to be in before his eyes or even his immensely powerful mind could begin to formulate that he moved. The door was little more than wet rice paper under his hand; he was a Genjutsu master and a Kamizuki, but he was also a swordsman by trade, and a damn good one; his body was a well honed instrument of war when it needed to be, and while he was not Naota, his long arms and artists fingers where extremely powerful, so the wooden contraption folded under a 'gentle' tap of his fist. Gentle sending it through the air and out the window on the far side of the room.

The entire room was black from the power of the fear and terror and darkness radiating from the child locked in a nightmare's embrace. This could not stand, not so long as he had a say. As powerful as this darkness was, it was nothing against his own power; he merely had to release the restraints on his own mind and allow it to radiate like a cleansing aura. It would infuse and infect everything around, driving away the darkness and releasing Aisling from the hold of the demons of her own mind; replacing them with the soothing calm and brilliant sunshine that held sway within Michi's mind. His own demons had long been conquered, so there was no worries for him to overtake her's for a short time. They could do nothing to him, but he could do everything to help her. Moving closer to her, he knelt down beside the bed and placed a warm hand upon her arm, gently shaking while he pushed calming energies into her body and mind, "Aisling. Aisling darling. Wake up for me, okay? It'll be alright, I won't let the darkness hurt you. It's safe to wake up now."

Aisling

Oh the horrors her mind held… she had never told anyone about what happened to her: not a single soul. Amaya had guesses and assumptions because she had been the only medic to touch her, the only medic she would allow to touch her without having a complete and total mental breakdown. But she had never uttered a single word about what had happened: she feared spreading the fear and its infectious nature too badly for something like that. But, here it was again, trapping her, tormenting her. Amaya had ensured her that those who had once caused her harm had been ‘dealt with’, a term Amaya had used whose meaning she had never wanted to look too deeply into… yet, they still caused her harm almost nightly. Most nights she went to bed fearing her sleeping hours, but they were nothing likes the instances such as today where she was so terrified in her sleep that she was screaming and shouting and pleading and begging.

That was until Michi arrived at least. What he did drove back the darkness and the pain, drove it back and held it at bay so that it could no longer harm her. What was left in its place was something foreign to her now: a lack of fear, hope, a sort of mental sunshine. Things she had not experienced since she was very young. Yet, here they were. It was enough to evaporate the nightmare as if it had never been in the first place.

"Aisling. Aisling darling. Wake up for me, okay? It'll be alright, I won't let the darkness hurt you. It's safe to wake up now." Gentle words and gentle shaking: enough to bring her around and wake her up without startling her. The nightmare was gone but she knew it had been: even upon first waking up she could feel her hair wet with sweat against her scalp, her heart beating as if she had been running, and her lungs attempting to play catch up on oxygen as if they had been deprived of it. Yet, at least she wasn’t screaming.

”… Michi….” A single word, but at least it was a start. She lifted her right hand, planning on using it to push stray strands of hair out of her face before she was shocked at how badly it was shaking. Even as she opened and closed her hand into a fist several times the shaking didn’t immediately pass: her mind was calm, her body just needed to play catch up – it needed to get with the program and realize that the danger was not real, that it no longer existed.

Perhaps it was the fact that she was still tired and not fully wide awake, or perhaps it was simply because she had reached that point to where she had to say something to someone, but either way Aisling focused her attention on Michi as a tear rolled down her right cheek. ”I never talk about it… Even Amaya who looked me over could only guess at what they did… I wouldn’t tell her. I wouldn’t answer her questions because I was afraid the truth would hurt her – it would hurt everyone. But it only gets worse… sometimes I don’t sleep at all because I’m too scared to. I’m too scared of what I might see when I do… I feel like I’m drowning in my own head.” That was roughly as accurately as she could describe it. She was free of those who had harmed her and yet she wasn’t free at all. She hadn’t been herself, not nearly, in so long a time that her real personality barely showed. She was terrified, in a way, of her own mind and the evil memories it liked to cook up and torment her with. ”I just don’t know what to do anymore...”